


Sharp thing hidden in my hand shaped like an astrolabe

by ConvenientAlias



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, M/M, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: John Wick was staring at his bare back, could strike at any moment. The very liquid gleam of his own eyes in the mirror seemed weakness already: one could not stand against John Wick unless one were made of stone.He took a deep breath and reached into his pocket. A pocketknife, a set of keys. The only weapons he had available.“Hello John.”





	Sharp thing hidden in my hand shaped like an astrolabe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).

Santino’s intention, at first, was to sit up waiting at the bar until someone called him to inform him that John Wick was dead. And really dead, not just well on the way there, because John Wick’s pretty much always halfway to hell, isn’t he, so that’s nowhere near good enough. He wants someone to call him up and tell him they’ve shot John Wick in the fucking head, maybe even cut said head right off, and text him photo evidence. He wants to go to bed that night knowing everyone who said John Wick was the boogieman, Baba Yaga, inescapable, are all wrong. He wants to go to bed knowing his plan worked and he’s going to be a Table member and he’s going to be safe walking down the streets.

But the report of John Wick’s death never came, and eventually Santino grew too tired to stay up waiting. He had a room, after all, and this was the Continental. He’d have to trust that while he slept, someone would take care of the issue.

(He’d never been a very trusting man.)

So he went to his room, and locked the door, and began to take off his clothes. But he had only managed his jacket and shirt when he spotted the phantom figure in his mirror, silently standing behind him. The figure of John Wick.

He froze.

Stood as still as John Wick, as if he could so ensure that John wouldn’t move either, keep them both in balance. He could feel a single drop of sweat trickling down his neck, and had a feeling that John could see it; he had the light on over the mirror, and illuminated every plane of his face and body like a spotlight. Even if he held himself still—body unmoving, face expressionless—he couldn’t hide his own vulnerability. John Wick was staring at his naked back, could strike at any moment. The very liquid gleam of his own eyes in the mirror seemed weakness already: one could not stand against John Wick unless one were made of stone.

He took a deep breath and reached into his pocket. A pocketknife, a set of keys. The only weapons he had available.

“Hello John.”

John stepped closer, out of the shadows, and in the light, Santino could see his suit was soaked in blood. Impossible to tell whether it belonged to him or to someone else.

“Hello, Santino.”

* * *

Santino didn’t live a peaceful life, usually, but that was partly because of Gianna. On the one hand, she knew of his High Table aspirations and made sure he was watched, dogged, trailed and traced whenever possible. On the other hand, she still used him as a member of the family, gave him various jobs to take care of, mostly under the table, most of them immoral, violent, even cruel. He had grown desensitized to violence, whether he was the one inflicting it or in danger of receiving it. He lived as if the world around him were encompassed in a red mist of blood: Every body around him could easily be reduced to its component parts if he needed it to be, to bone and flesh and pain and submission. And he, too, could so easily be reduced.

He knew that and he’d thought he’d accepted it. But here was John Wick in his bedroom, the man to do the reducing. Except John didn’t deal in pain or submission, only in death.

Santino knew most people in their line of business valued a painless death but right now, thinking of how quickly his brain would stop sparking, his heart stop beating, his blood stop pulsing, and his mind stop thinking… he did not much like it.

* * *

“Remember where we are,” Santino said, warning. “You can’t touch me here, John. Don’t be stupid.”

But John had already broken the rules, breaking into his room. That wasn’t enough to get him killed, but it was enough for some form of consequences. There were cameras in the rooms. The management would already know—but they hadn’t come yet, and maybe they wouldn’t. Winston had always shown a certain fondness for John, and he had no such fondness for Santino.

But he had a damn reputation to think of, didn’t he? He couldn’t just let…

“I know where I am,” John said. “You’re the one who’s been forgetful lately, Santino. You’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with.”

“Have I?” His hand clenched around the pocket knife—if he got a little closer to John, he could just flick it open, get it into John’s neck or his eye or something, kill him or at least make him bleed and stall him and get away. He breathed in, out. (If he got close, John might as easily snap his neck.) “I’m dealing with the man who took my marker and my help. You’re the one who forgot the price.”

“I’ve paid the price, Santino. You made sure of that.”

They eyed each other. Already more conversation than John allowed most of his victims. Baba Yaga wasn’t known for fucking conversation, but for a neat kill. When he wanted to be neat, at least.

He stepped a bit closer, fingering the pocket knife. If John disarmed him, then the keys. Something, anything.

“I don’t know what you have in your pocket,” John said, “but I have a pencil in one of mine. I wouldn’t try it.”

Yeah, it was hopeless.

But he wasn’t a man to give up without trying.

With a wordless cry, he sprang forward, stabbing up, up—but he was trained more for management than for one on one. John grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm, threw him to the floor. The knife fell, and John kicked it away. Of course he didn’t pick it up. He wouldn’t need it.

“You shouldn’t try to kill me,” John said. He sounded tired. “We’re on Continental grounds. No business.”

“Fuck you. I can take my chance as well as you can.”

“I don’t kill on Continental grounds.”

“So this isn’t you killing me.”

“If this was me killing you,” John said, “you’d be dead.”

Maybe that was true. Instead he was just lying on the ground, humiliated and in agony. But only for a moment. John hefted him up, and held him flush against his body, back to chest, waist to waist, legs to legs. It had to be quite a sight to the room cameras—hilarious, probably, to Winston, who would be laughing and saying to himself that he’d told Santino all along that John would come for him. Santino thought about this distantly, and wondered what kind of angle they’d get to see the scene from if John took this opportunity to use the fucking pencil.

But John had said he wasn’t going to kill him. So this was something else. John Wick had _broken into a room of the Continental and attacked him_ for something else.

“You made me angry,” John growled. “Can you feel that, Santino?”

Santino’s urge was to say something flippant, but John was holding him with an arm against his throat and another pinning his arms, and it wasn’t a very casual position. Though, he noted, if this was John Wick angry, then he could be angry and still stay pretty cool. Despite the wetness of blood on his clothes, which was rubbing off on Santino’s bare skin (so recent as to have not yet dried, and yes, it was definitely somebody else’s), his body was steady and did not tremble. If his heart was beating fast, it would be impossible to tell through the bulletproof vest he was probably wearing under his blood-soaked jacket. The only indication of any emotion was…

Well, it was not a typical reaction to anger.

Santino found himself going for the flippant remark after all. “I can feel that you’re turned on, Wick. Is this how you always react to violence? Or is it just me you’re into?”

John released him with a shove that sent him flying halfway across the room before he caught himself. While he was recovering, John said, “You made me angry, Santino. You deliberately came after me and dragged me out of retirement, and then you tried to kill me. All because of a marker. I was angry. But I decided not to kill you. Not because you deserve it. But I did owe you.”

“Damn right you did.”

“Not in the way you understand it,” John said. “I don’t care about the people you helped me kill anymore. But I had years of peace with my wife—something you’ll never understand. I bought that in blood, from you. Now I’ve paid. We’re done.”

Santino should have been relieved beyond measure. It wasn’t just any man who offended the Boogieman and lived to tell the tale. But somehow, in his relief, he found he was again pissed off, this time at the condescension of it all. John fucking Wick, telling him he couldn’t understand peace and love?

Please.

“No need to be so high and mighty,” he said. “You paid the marker because you had to or die. The same reason you’re not willing to hurt me on Continental grounds. You can’t do shit to me, not because of any higher morals, but because you’re scared.” He sneered. “So don’t act like…”

And then John was in his face again, grabbing him by the shoulders. “You think I’m scared of you? Of the fucking Continental? You think you’re untouchable?”

And before Santino could answer, he smashed their mouths together, kissing him with a brutality unparalleled in Santino’s experience. Even his mouth tasted like blood, and his chin was hard and angular. When Santino processed the situation enough to fight back, he only gripped Santin’s arms harder, and slowly propelled him to the room’s bed. He shoved him down on the nice, clean, cream-colored comforter, bracketing his legs and holding his chest down with one hand. He himself only loomed over the bed, and Santino thought in the back of his head that the comforter wasn’t yet blood-stained, but it probably would be soon, one way or another.

He didn’t try to rise. He didn’t even fight when John stripped his pants off, leaving him in only his underwear in front of a leering monster. John had said he wouldn’t kill him; he didn’t want to change John’s mind. The pocket knife was gone; the keys had been in the pants. He didn’t want to test whether he and a set of keys could beat John Wick and a pencil. He could let John fuck him, if it would give John satisfaction, if it would make John feel he was degraded enough, it if would make John leave.

(Why hadn’t the fucking management stepped in yet?

Was Winston laughing?)

John's hand trailed down his chest, hooked his underwear. He looked Santino in the eye, and Santino wondered what he got from Santino's expression. Maybe he did look afraid. If so, John didn't mirror any of it back, but only stared at him, face of stone, implacable. As if he barely desired what he threatened to do, even though evidence of the opposite was clearly visible.

Then, the pencil. John removed it from his pocket and positioned over Santino’s bare thigh. He paused for a moment, readjusted his grip, and thrust it straight down

Santino barely screamed, really.

“You’re not untouchable,” John said, calmly. For a given value of calmly. “Don’t contact me again.”

* * *

He waited almost ten minutes after John was gone to call management, letting blood trickle onto the comforter as he forced himself to breathe, waited to make sure John was really gone. Then, a doctor, room service, and Winston himself. Winston assured him that somehow the cameras in his room had been malfunctioning—a bad mistake that he would take up with his technicians. But there was an amused look in his eye, and Santino had to wonder how far he would have let things go. How far he would have liked things to go.

“John Wick,” he gasped, “will you sanction him?”

Winston cocked his head. “Certainly, if you can provide me with evidence that it was really John Wick.”

“You’re disgusting. Your level of bias is disgusting,” Santino said, and he was glad when Winston left him alone with the doctor.

He walked with a limp for some time afterwards, and he was paranoid. Kept on expecting John to come back and continue the job where he left off. But when no more of his people showed up dead in John’s signature style and no phantoms were lurking in his mirrors, he had to accept that John had really left with that final message, and truly never did want to see Santino again.

This was clearly a good thing. It did piss Santino off, though. He redoubled his routine for martial arts and weapons training, and practiced every move thinking of John Wick. How he’d like to personally stick a knife into the man after all, or better yet, sink his own teeth into him. Any chance to see the man really bleed, and break, and fall.

But until he had a good excuse and a better strategy, he would have to leave John alone, or die for his presumption. That message had been received clearly enough. It would take a stronger and more prepared man than he currently was to go head to head, fist to fist, with Baba Yaga.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 300bpm Flash Exchange of August 2019, for the prompt of Santino D'Antonio/John Wick and the song "Foreign Object" by the Mountain Goats.


End file.
